Poor heat dissipation is a common issue for microelectronics device packages. Semiconductor chips, especially those with high thermal design power (TDP) requirements can result in localized overheating that can be deleterious to product yield, performance and reliability of the resulting microelectronics device packages. A thermal management device, such as a heat sink, is typically placed on the backside of wafers for heat to be transported through a molding compound encapsulating a surface of the wafer to the surrounding environment. However, the molding compound, which is typically a mixture of an epoxy and a silica filler, has a low thermal conductivity that is generally in the range of 0.6 W/m-K to 0.8 W/m-K. This can make the molding compound a barrier to heat dissipation.
For some processes where the thermal management device is attached to the wafer, a back-side grinding process is needed to reduce the thickness of the molding compound. However, such grinding process may cause the molding compound to become undone or delaminated from the wafer to which it is attached. Where this has occurred, the edges of chips of the wafer may be susceptible to cracking, chipping and/or exposed to corrosive environmental influences during a subsequent die cutting process and associated handling.